eggcavefandomcom-20200214-history
The Mystery of Ghosty
This was a plot released for Halloween 2009. It centered around one of the two new eggs released, Ghosty, and had Arkians find hidden eggs around the site and solve a riddle to obtain the second new egg released through this plot, Balrogipuwet. When the event was over, the plot solution was released, which is where a majority of this page comes from. The Plot In October of 2009, we ran a plot called The Mystery of Ghosty. Egg Cave was visited by a mysterious being, appropriately named "Ghosty" by Ark citizens. He said something pretty strange: "Useeee theee IDs iiiin the alphabetttt." This greatly puzzled Ark citizens. To make matters weirder, eggs started randomly appearing around Ark; these eggs weren't anywhere near the Egg Cave! Ark citizens began to ask: "Do you think Ghosty has anything to do with the random egg appearances? Or it is some other phantom we don't even know about?!" Scary! Then, Ghosty appeared in the news and said: Find the eggs; then discovery shall find you. Part 1: Finding the Eggs In the first part of the plot, you had to find 12 eggs that were randomly hidden around the site. At the plot headquarters, Ghosty was saying random things that hinted at the locations of the twelve eggs. But, did you notice a pattern about his random sayings? Every single phrase that ended in a period (.) led to a page that contained a hidden egg, where as all of the other phrases that ended in exclamation marks (!) were red herrings! Here were the location of the twelve eggs and Ghosty's sayings that hinted at their location: *''The footer looks suspicious.'' => There was an invisible egg in the footer. The footer had an awkward space in it, which was where you had to click. *''Wait, you don't believe I'm that 1337?.'' => The two underlined letters said it all: "ID." You were required to go to egg ID #1337 (eggcave.com/egg/1337); it contained a hidden egg, even though it's not a valid, alive creature. *''Paitence really is a virtue. Randomness is important.'' => There was one egg that was hidden on the sidebar above the clock. It had a 1/100 chance of appearing on each page load. This one took patience! *''*music plays* STOP in the name of love.'' => The stop sign in Ark City contained a hidden egg. Yup, that small little stop sign! *''Nobody cares about who is on the bottom of the leaderboards. Haha.'' => This egg was hidden at the bottom of the "Clicks" leaderboard. Easy enough, right? *''Your profile needs to be dazzling.'' => You had to post the word "dazzling" somewhere in your profile text in order to get this egg. *''Who would name their egg "iwantanegg"?.'' => Another "buzz word!" You had to search for "iwantanegg". *''Legal things scare me. Like Aeroria.'' => This was located at the bottom of the Terms of Service page. Yes, NOT the Town Hall! ;) *''Mmm... a tree.'' => On the Ark world map, a tree contained a hidden egg (similar to the stop sign). *''The Adoption Center is so great.'' => Another easy one. This egg was at the bottom of the Adoption Center page. *''Don't get slyked.'' => This egg was on the Salaslyke Archives page. *''*music plays* Cause when I look at the stars...'' => The only place we had stars on Egg Cave was on the front page. Yup, the five * * * * * that divide the page. ;) The rest were all misleading red herrings! Part 2: Solve the Riddle After finding the eggs, Ghosty appeared and said this: "Finally... you've'' found all of my hidden eggs. But yet, you still haven't solved the mystery! Discovery has still not found you!'' In order to find Discovery, you must answer this question: based on what you know and that the order of these eggs is significant (left to right, top to bottom), what is the name of Discovery?"' The answer was Balrogipuwet, the name of the new species. The "based on what you know" part of the question should have instanteously taken you back to the original puzzling phrase from Ghosty: "Useeee theee IDs iiiin the alphabetttt." Each of the species of eggs that you found had a respective "creature ID" (obtained by looking at the URL of the respective Archives page). For example, the Calla profile was located at''eggcave.com/archives/view/2; thus, its ID was 2. The second egg (Drakomo) was located at''eggcave.com/archives/view/1''; thus, its ID was 1. After doing this for each creature, you should have gotten a strand of numbers. Using Ghosty's advice, the creature IDs corresponded to a respective letter in the alphabet (that is, a = 1, b = 2, c = 3, etc). Thus: *B = 2 = calla *A = 1 = drakomo *L = 12 = aerlo *R = 18 = bunthoff *O = 15 = chimera *G = 7 = alkub *I = 9 = sparktail *P = 16 = diablos *U = 21 = mo *W = 23 = nipha *E = 5 = salaslyke *T = 20 = iramae Which would give you the word BALROGIPUWET. Part 3: Conclusion After solving the puzzle, Ghosty appeared with one last final word and an explanation for his actions: "YOU HAVE FOUND DISCOVERY! Let's get this straight: the Science and Research Center in Ark City completely denied my existence. But I came across a new species (that I named "Balrogipuwet"); I wanted all of Ark to know about my discovery! Since they denied my existence, I had no way of telling others about my discovery. I felt rejected. Thus, I haunted Ark and tried to give its citizens clues, so that THEY could uncover this new species. That way, the Science and Research Center wouldn't write it off as "absurd." I'm so happy that you've discovered this new species!" Ghosty then showed what the Balrogipuwet egg and all of it's stages would look like. After this, Cathy, who runs the Science and Research Center, said: " Wow, the Balrogipuwet is a rather incredible species! Congratulations on your discovery, Ark citizens! We have received stories from multiple residents explaining their weird encounters with this "Ghosty" creature. Although we denied the existence of such ghosts, the number of stories is overwhelming. We sincerely apologize and will never doubt the existence of ghosts again!" The Prize Balrogipuwet eggs were given out as prizes to anyone who completed this plot on November 3 at 6:00 pm ECT after the plot had ended. A link was put in the Site Blog with where to adopt the egg and left up until everyone who had completed the plot claimed their egg. It was announced that Balrogipuwet eggs would only be given to people that completed this plot and would never be available again.